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The Danger of Wealth at the Top

October 19, 2012

For years, Mitt Romney has advocated tax breaks tilted toward the rich in a classic “supply-side” strategy, but is now trying to obscure that position. His shift comes as even conservative economists say the concentration of wealth at the top is hurting economic progress, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

By Paul R. Pillar

You know we have a serious problem with inequality when that paragon of right-of-center political economy, The Economist, puts as much emphasis on it as it does in its current issue.

A major “Special Report on the World Economy”is all about the causes and ramifications of what the magazine calls “a dramatic concentration of incomes over the past 30 years.” It is a concentration that has occurred in many parts of the world but by no means uniformly. The pattern of inequality is especially glaring in the United States, in terms of both absolute inequality and recent trends.

The magazine’s report lays out some of the relevant statistics about the United States that ought to be familiar by now but nonetheless still shock. The share of national income going to the wealthiest one percent of Americans has doubled since 1980, from 10 percent to 20 percent. The share going to the highest one hundredth of one percent, a mere 16,000 families, has quadrupled during the same time from just over one percent to, astoundingly, nearly five percent.

Some of the growing inequality is connected with processes that are on balance economically good, in particular, globalization, which has changed the demand for different sorts of skills. But much of it is associated with processes that are economically bad.

One of those processes is the upward redistributive effect of government policy. The Economist notes that when taxes and entitlements in the United States are all taken into account, “the government lavishes more dollars overall on the top fifth of the income distribution than the bottom fifth.”

That last pattern should not be surprising in view of the crony capitalism in which “America’s growing inequality has political roots.” The finance industry has more lobbyists in Washington than almost anyone else: about four for each member of Congress. Accordingly, financiers have been allowed “to tilt rules in their favor” and have been “among the biggest winners from changes to America’s tax code.”

It is conventional wisdom that there is a tension between efforts to alleviate inequality and efforts to expand the national economic pie. There is some truth in the conventional wisdom: the hope of moving ahead of the crowd in wealth and material well-being can be a powerful incentive to apply more work or more ingenuity to a productive endeavor.

But that incentive would be gone only in an entirely flat society, and does not explain or justify the glaring and growing inequality that is today’s reality. The Economist‘s report explains the several respects in which that inequality undermines, rather than promotes, economic growth and prosperity.

There is, first of all, the crony capitalism, which is less about fostering the free markets that are essential for competition and growth than about preserving the privileged positions of those who have already made it.

Then there is the huge waste of human capital entailed in inequality of opportunity. That type of inequality correlates with overall economic inequality. Again, the United States displays some of the worst of it.

Its social mobility, i.e., how much any one individual’s income is unchained from a tight correlation with the income of the same individual’s parents, is lower than in most other advanced Western countries.

The Economist sums up the implications for growth and prosperity this way: “High and growing levels of income inequality can translate into growing inequality of opportunity for the next generation and hence declining social mobility. … Bigger gaps in opportunity, in turn, mean fewer people with skills and hence slower growth in the future.”

Finally, but not least important, much of skewed income at the upper levels has come from rents rather than productivity, as illustrated by how much of the very rich have, The Economist notes, “made their money in Wall Street rather than Main Street.”

“Rents” is the technical and somewhat polite economic term that refers to extracting a profit from merely owning or controlling something, or being in an advantageous position, rather than actually producing something. A blunter and more descriptive term is “parasitic.” Economies grow and prosper from productivity; they do not from rents.

All of this should be disturbing even if we looked no further than our nation’s borders. It is more disturbing still when considering another pattern that the magazine’s report notes in passing: that while inequality within countries and especially in the United States has greatly increased in recent years, inequality between nations has decreased as poorer countries catch up with richer ones.

America’s growth-inhibiting inequality is making it less able to compete, and less able to serve as an exemplar for others, in the global arena.

Ideologically driven myopia, which mistakenly cherishes anything in the private sector status quo, even when it is destructive of free markets and vigorous competition, and disdains anything government does, even when it is necessary for economic growth and the fullest use of human capital, is needlessly weakening the relative as well as absolute position of the United States.

Another example of this myopia is the disgraceful state into which the nation’s physical infrastructure has been allowed to fall (as Arnaud de Borchgrave has recently observed). Repair of that infrastructure is essential for economic growth, but repair of much of it requires action and expenditure by government.

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

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8 comments for “The Danger of Wealth at the Top”

â€œVikram Pandit, chief executive of Citigroup, the nation’s third largest bank, is receiving $14.9 million in compensation for his work in 2011.â€ (The Wall Street Journal)

â€œJamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, took home roughly $23 million in 2011 and has been less charitable toward critics and new financial regulations.â€ (Huffington Post)

â€œMitt Romney and his wife made at least $15 million (and as much as $115 million) from the very taxpayer-funded auto bailout of 2009 that he opposed, while donors to Republican candidates made more than $4 billion by holding the auto industry and tens of thousands of American jobs hostage.â€ (Truthdig)

â€œAll Told, the Price Tag for Citigroupâ€™s New Chief Is $216 Million. Details of Mr. Panditâ€™s pay and that of several other top executives were found in Citigroupâ€™s proxy statement, released Thursday.â€ (New York Times)

Yes, I think it’s about time we ended welfare for the rich. When will Americans wake up and smell the bullshit? Let’s face it. Most of the â€œcompensationâ€ to these people ends up in offshore tax shelters or invested in Chinese industrial concerns. If you give a poor person $300 per week, he’ll spend $300 a week in the U. S. economy. That stimulates OUR economy. If you give Mitt Romney $15 Million, that’s going to the Cayman Islands. Stop and think about it. What could Vikram Pandit possibly do for the United States economy that is worth $216 Million? THAT much money could give 13,846 unemployed people $300 per week for an entire year. I used to think that the problem with Americans was illiteracy-that they don’t understand the significance of the financial hocus pocus tossed around by the pathological liars in politics. The real problem, apparently, is INNUMERACY. They don’t bother to stop and figure out that social safety nets are a drop in the bucket compared to the REAL blood-sucking parasites destroying America’s middle class. Check the facts: if you want to find the largest concentration of â€œOne Percentâ€ wealth holders in the United States, you need look no further than the United States Congress. The foxes are guarding the hen house, and America’s moronic chickens are coming home to roost. Buon Appetito, America! You’re on the menu, and your representatives are famished!

Rehmat

October 19, 2012 at 2:54 pm

Last November, former Citigroup CEO, Sanford Weill, a Zionist Jew sold his 6,744 sq.ft. apartment at 15 Central Park West for $88 million asking price to Russian Jewish billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlevâ€™s daughter Ekaterina.

The Time Magazine has listed Sanford Weill who retired shortly before the 2008 crash, among the â€œ25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisisâ€. The New York Times carried the headline: â€œLaughing All the Way From the Bankâ€œ.

This year the Sonoma State University (SSU) in Northern California awarded honorary Ph.D to Sanford Weill and his wife Joan.

Rehmatshit at it again with his antisemitic crap. What about his saudi buddies who bankrolled Ben Laden? What about his puppet president of iran who funds terrorist organizations like hamas and hezbollah? Go sniff a donkey’s ass, bath in oil, and eat some pork.

John

October 19, 2012 at 6:11 pm

Rehmat, your views are just as devisive and harmful as Borat’s. Generally speaking no group of people deserve such derision, there are usually good people in any group. We have to find commonality amongst the middle if we want things to get better, not drive them away with bitterness.

Rehmat

October 19, 2012 at 6:47 pm

John – Take your Zionist blinders off and see Rehmat is not a Zionazi Jew and doesn’t quote abusive Talmud like borat each time.

Borat, you think that is horrific, go read up about the Deir Yassin massacre where your cherished Zionazis disembowelled pregnant women or about the 13 year old terrified schoolgirl who was shot 17 times by one ‘civilised’ IDF major who went unpunished.

In spite of your desperate efforts to divert attention from those filthy murdering Zionist pigs (include yourself), you can never hide the appalling atrocities and crimes of those marauding, land stealers.

Milstein, Uri 1996 History of the War of Independence: Out of crisis came decision. Vol. 4. A. Sacks, trans. New York: University Press of America. (pp.376-396)

NOTE: ETZEL is the accronym for Irgun Zvai Leumi or ‘the Irgun’ for short.
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On April 9, the London BBC, relying on Raâ€™ananâ€™s communique to the press, reported 200 Arabs killed at Deir-Yassin.150 The following day, ETZELâ€™s radio station quoted 254 killed, according to Raâ€™ananâ€™s report to ETZEL headquarters in Tel Aviv. That same day, Paâ€™il sent his report to Galili, quoting the same figure and repeating it at least three more times: in his sworn statement to the Jabotinsky Institute, in a press interview and in an article published by the newspaper Yediâ€™ot Aharonot. â€œThe number of Arabs killed at Deir-Yassin was 254, according to tallies by the GADNA troops and Jerusalem residents who had to bury the dead since the ETZEL and LEHI men abandoned the village and refused to do that job. The number of slain has been determined by those who were best qualified to do so. It is pointless to turn to other sources that have inferior means of knowing the truth.â€151 Paâ€™ilâ€™s SHAI superior, David Cohen (â€œAvniâ€), confirmed several years later that he remembered Paâ€™il quoting that figure in his report. â€œSince the figure seemed exaggerated,â€ he added, â€œwe asked him how he had arrived at it. Paâ€™il answered, â€˜I didnâ€™t count them all, but thereâ€™s a report by the man himself,â€™ meaning, of course, ETZELâ€™s Jerusalem commander – Raâ€™anan.â€152 IDF researchers wrote in the draft for the â€œState Bookâ€ in the 1950s that 240 Arabs were killed at Deir-Yassin.â€153 For more than ten years, Yitzhak Levi, who had access to classified documentation on the subject, investigated the events of the War of Independence in Jerusalem. â€œDuring the action and after it,â€ he writes, â€œabout 254 people were killed.â€154 This figure has been published hundreds of times in Hebrew, Arabic and other languages.

â€œNobody counted bodies, not even those who buried them,â€ says Moneta.

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[MONETA:]

Everyone exaggerated. Most of them had never seen so many dead before, and the high figure was convenient for all involved. The dissidents [Revisionists] wanted to brag and scare the Arabs. The Hagana and Jewish Agency wanted to smear the dissidents and scare the Arabs. The Arabs wanted to smear the Jews. The British wanted to smear Jewish terrorists. They all latched on to a number invented by Raâ€™anan. We loaded 30 bodies onto the truck. That was the main group. There were about another 30; all told – about 60 bodies. I reported that to my SHAI operator, who reported to his chiefs.155

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â€œThey spoke about 61 dead,â€ says Idelstein.156 Gihon, who examined the village on Sheâ€™altiâ€™elâ€™s instructions on the afternoon of April 9, says, â€œI didnâ€™t count the bodies. I estimated four ditches full of bodies, twenty in each, and a few dozen more in the quarry. I threw out a figure: 150.â€157 SHAIâ€™s Yonah Feitelson, who toured Deir-Yassin early on April 10, told his superiors that he had seen 80 dead.158 When Ariâ€™eli returned from Deir-Yassin on the 13th, he told his wife that his GADNA unit had buried 70 corpses and blown up another 40, a total of 110.159 In 1981, an ex-villager, Mohammed Aref Samir, told an interviewer that 94 bodies â€œwere gathered that day.â€160 Bir-Zeit University researchers arrived at a figure of 110 after interviewing survivors.161 The number of dead appears to have been 110.

How were the old people, men, women and children killed at Deir-Yassin on April 9?

A circular distributed to senior Hagana personnel on April 18, 1948, stated, â€œThe first wounded and dead among the dissidents, caused confusion in their ranks. Discipline was affected. Each little group conducted a separate battle. The assault was carried out cruelly. Entire families were killed, bodies piled up on each other.â€162 Eyewitness accounts and other documents support those SHAI findings.

The question remains whether those people were killed during the battle or after it. On a massacre following the battle there is only the account of Meâ€™ir Paâ€™il, who claims that he was in the village during and after the battle.

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[MEâ€™IR PAâ€™IL:]

I saw groups of ETZEL and LEHI men going house to house, firing Tommy guns at anyone they found inside. Throughout the battle, I didnâ€™t observe any difference in behavior between ETZEL and LEHI men. I saw almost no [Arab] men – I assume they escaped when the battle began – but mainly women, old people and children. .â€™hey were murdered in groups, crowded into room corners and sprayed with bullets. In the afternoon, they caught 15 or 20 men, who were unarmed when I saw them, got them on a truck and drove off to Jerusalem. I heard later that they paraded the Arabs through Jerusalem, a sort of victory parade. There were war whoops and calls from the crowd, â€œTake ten pounds and let me kill one!â€ but they didnâ€™t. They drove those Arabs back to the village and murdered them in the quarry between Givat-Shaâ€™ul and the village. I saw them in die afternoon. The massacre in the village lasted several hours. Not one commander shouted or tried to prevent it… I shouted and searched for the commanders with the help of a LEHI man whoâ€™d invited me. They asked him, â€œWho is this?â€ He answered, â€œA buddy from my Palmach days.â€ I screamed, â€œHave you gone mad? Youâ€™re doing terrible things!â€ Then a LEHI commander answered, â€œItâ€™s none of your business.â€ Another one asked, â€œWhat should we do with them?â€ I said, â€œTake them to the Arab zone.â€

I donâ€™t know whether they sobered up on their own or my shouts might have got to them; at any rate, I saw them later, leading the remaining women and children to the school building. There were about 250 or 300 of them. I heard arguments over whether to blow up the building on the people inside. In the afternoon, they transported them all to the Arab zone in town. I left. While leaving, I saw the EZZEL and LEHI men, murder on their faces, coming out of the village with sheep, chickens and other loot.163

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Moshe Idelstein, the friend who supposedly had invited Paâ€™il to Deir-Yassin, asserts, â€œI didnâ€™t invite Meâ€™ir Paâ€™il and he wasnâ€™t at Deir-Yassin.â€164

Other ETZEL and LEHI men state that Paâ€™il was not at Deir-Yassin and could not have been there without their knowing it. Zetler, Raâ€™anan, Barzilai, Lapidot and Zelivansky state that they did not see Paâ€™il at Deir-Yassin.165 Paâ€™ilâ€™s claims also go unsubstantiated by Hagana personnel. Statements by Sheâ€™altiâ€™el, Mart, Eldad and Schiff mention neither his name nor his code names (â€œAvrahamâ€ and â€œRamâ€). Paâ€™il spoke about exchanges between him and Palmach soldiers in Deir-Yassin. Eren and Gihon, who were acquainted with Paâ€™il at the time, did not see him at Deir-Yassin.166 Shlomo Havilyo, the Haganaâ€™s western Jerusalem commander, was at Givat-Shaâ€™ul on April 9th. â€œI didnâ€™t see Meâ€™ir Paâ€™il,â€ he says. â€œI knew him well. Iâ€™d remember it if he was there.â€167 Ariâ€™eli, who supervised the burials, says that he did not see Meâ€™ir Paâ€™il at Deir-Yassin, much less talk with him about the number of bodies buried or any other matter.168

Seven captives paraded on trucks through the city streets by ETZEL later were taken to the Deir-Yassin quarries and murdered, SHAI reported on April 12, 1948.169 As soon as the village was taken, men, women and children were loaded onto trucks and driven through the streets of Jerusalem,â€ Yitzhak Levi wrote in 1971, â€œlots of them were later brought back to the village and killed by rifle and machine gun fire. This is the truth as set down and recorded in the national institutions.â€170 Levi elsewhere quotes Paâ€™ilâ€™s statement.171 Yonah Ben-Sasson disclaimed the alleged massacre at the quarry. Although he found the dissidents preparing to kill the Arabs there, he prevented the shooting.172 Paâ€™il claims that he sent a roll of pictures of the slaughter to Galili with his report; personnel at the IDF Archives confirm that their files contain photographs of bodies from Deir-Yassin but say that the photos are undated and do not show how the people depicted were killed. A British team (police officers, a doctor and a nurse) interrogated survivors at Silwan. â€œNo doubt the Jewish attackers committed many sexual atrocities,â€ wrote CID Assistant Director Richard C. Catling, who headed the team, on April 15, 1948.

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[CATLING:]

Many tender-aged schoolgirls were raped and later butchered. Old women were abused as well. There is a story going round about a young girl literally torn in half. Many infants were slaughtered and killed. I saw an old woman, who claimed she was ninety-four, that had been beaten on the head with rifle-butts. Bracelets were ripped off arms and rings off fingers, earlobes were cut off women for the earrings.

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A Deir-Yassin woman told one interrogator, â€œA man shot my sister Dalya, who was nine months pregnant, in the neck, and then cut her belly with a butcherâ€™s knife.â€ Naâ€™aneh Khalik, 16, said, â€œI saw a man pick up a sword and split my neighbor Jamil from head to toe. Then he did the same thing to my uncle Fatâ€™hi on the steps of our home.â€173 These statements do not mesh with Dr. Engelâ€™s report and that of Drs. Avigdori and Druyan, who examined the bodies at Deir-Yassin and found no evidence of abuse or rape. According to their findings, all deaths were caused by gunshot wounds.

Thirty-three years later, the Jerusalem newspaper Kol Haâ€™ir carried an account on May 1, 1981, by Mohammed Aref Samir, a Deir-Yassin survivor and Jordanian Government supervisor of vocational and art education in the West Bank until the Six-Day War. It read:

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â€œAt 3 in the morning, the village was surrounded by ETZEL and LEHI men. The village guards, equipped with an assortment of shotguns, couldnâ€™t even fire warning shots. They were surprised to hear voices speaking in Hebrew at such an early hour. At about four, gunfire sounded at the eastern end of the village. Many times [before] the village had been under curfew and when the British called over the loudspeaker from one end of the village, I could hear them at the other. Moreover, a shout in Givat-Shaâ€™ul, without a loudspeaker, could be heard clearly in our village. That morning, we heard nothing, neither a loudspeaker nor shouts. We woke up to the sound of gunfire. The first victims were the laborers who set out early. They were quickly butchered. Later, they began a bombardment with a light mortar that caused little damage. The rest went on in the houses.

From 5 to 11 a.m., there was methodical murder as they went from house to house. At the eastern end of the village, no one got away. Entire families were done in. At 6 a.m., they caught 21 villagers, youths of about 25, lined them up by what is today the post office and executed them. Many women who watched that horrid sight went insane; some of them are still in the hospital. A pregnant woman coming from the bakery with her son was murdered and her belly slit open, having seen her son murdered first. They set up a Bren gun in a house they had taken and shot whoever crossed its line of fire. My cousin went out to see what happened to his uncle, who had been shot a few minutes before. He was killed, too. His father, who followed him, was murdered by that same Bren gun and the mother who came to find out about her beloved found her death by them. Aish Zeidan, who had worked as watchman at Givat-Shaâ€™ul, came to see what was going on and was killed. Ninety-four bodies they gathered that day. No one told us where they were buried and we didnâ€™t ask. For the faithful, the body doesnâ€™t matter. Their spirits are with us.

At 11, men came in on trucks and began rounding up prisoners. Until 9 p.m., prisoners were collected at Givat-Shaâ€™ul and driven to the Old City. As you see, I reside at Kfar-Ramoun in a splendid house with marble columns and carpets – but I still live in Deir-Yassin.â€

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The families of Mohammed Aref Samir and his wife escaped from DeirYassin to Ein-Kerem, climbed through Malha to the Old City and walked on to Kfar-Ramoun.174

These findings indicate that most of the Arabs killed at Deir-Yassin were slain during the battle, inside their houses as the attackers broke in or blew them up. There were other incidents, too, Raâ€™anan told the press in 1972.

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[RAâ€™ANAN:]

At 11 a.m., we resumed action. We blew up the first house. We blew up another about every quarter hour. We had no idea who was inside. We regarded every house as a fortified position. By that method, we reached the house where Yiftah lay. As we got to him, we saw heâ€™d passed away. A young soldier holding a Bren gun took up a position nearby. We warned the people inside the house that we were about to blow it up. Having seen what had happened to the other residents, they came out with their hands up. There were nine people, a woman and a child among them. They guy with the Bren gun suddenly squeezed the trigger. A burst hit the Arabs. â€œThatâ€™s for Yiftah!â€ he yelled. â€œWhat have you done?â€ we shouted at him. â€œOne of them had a rifle and was trying to shoot,â€ he replied. Other men confirmed later that one of the Arabs had stood up.175

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SHAIâ€™s Yisraâ€™el Netah was sitting with his partner, both in Arab disguise, at an Arab cafe in Ein-Kerem when refugees came in from Deir-Yassin and said that the Jews had discovered Arab soldiers disguised as women.

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â€œThey searched women, too. One of those [Arabs] realized heâ€™d been cornered, whipped out a gun and shot a Jewish commander, whose comrades, livid with fury, fired in all directions, killing the Arabs standing by. I drew a Jewish soldier pointing a bayoneted rifle at an Arab woman. I chose not to explain that he was not bayoneting and that the woman was actually a man. I sent the drawing to the newspapers, through the Arab HQ in Jerusalem, with the additional information that 600 women, 500 men and 400 children were slaughtered at Deir-Yassin. I exaggerated on purpose to frighten the Arabs. My drawing was published in an Arab paper.â€176

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The dissident [Revisionist] fighters were not the only ones who murdered Arabs at Deir-Yassin. â€œWe assembled at a spot in the village,â€ says Kalman Rosenblatt, a Palmach squad leader there. â€œOur driver arrived with an Arab in greenish overalls and interrogated him. It came out that he wasnâ€™t from around Jerusalem and had hidden in a school locker. The driver shot him dead. We were shocked.â€177 Another Palmach man, Gidâ€™on Sarig, describes how one of his comrades â€œentered a room, saw movement in a wardrobe, fired – and an Arab dropped out, rolling in his own blood.â€178 LEHIâ€™s Reuven Greenberg says, â€œThe Palmach men… set off a charge on [an Arabâ€™s] neck and the head flew off the body.â€179

13. â€œAgainst the Fascist Betrayalâ€

The Deir-Yassin affair, researcher Dr. Yoram Nimrod wrote in 1987, greatly affected the Yishuvâ€™s relations with King Abdallah; reduced the prospects of isolating the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, from the countryâ€™s Arabs and of establishing an opposition against him; made Abdallah appear as the Palestinian Arabsâ€™ savior; and rallied the Arabs. When things went well, many Arabs joined the militias; when the situation worsened, many abandoned their homes. Thus, the numbers of refugees swelled and became an a obstacle to peace arrangements after the War of Independence.180 If Nimrod is right, the Deir-Yassin affair decisively altered the course of the war. The publicity seems to have been more influential than the actual events.

The first exaggeration may be attributed to ETZEL: the information released to the press by its commanders the day of the battle, and the ETZEL radio announcements the day after. On April 11, Hussein Khalidi, the Arab Higher Committeeâ€™s secretary, called King Abdallah to intervene in Palestine on the grounds of what had happened at Deir-Yassin.181

The Jewish Agency sent Abdallah a message in an effort to preserve his understanding with Golda Meâ€™ir. Condemning the Deir-Yassin killings as â€œa brutal and barbarous deed that does not comport with the spirit, tradition and cultural heritage of the Jewish nation,â€ it implored Abdallah to act â€œso that the present dispute over Palestine – if inevitable – will be settled according to conventional rules of war as accepted by civilized nations.â€182 That same day, Abdallah cabled back, â€œIt is common knowledge that the Jewish Agency directs Zionist activities everywhere and no Jew does anything contrary to its policy. The Deir-Yassin incident is one of the factors liable to let matters be determined contrary to the advice of those who have preached for armistice, in America and other countries. The King presumes that the Jewish Agency will do all that is required so that no atrocities shall be committed at this time.â€183

The Deir-Yassin events became an â€œaffairâ€ due to the juxtaposition of several factors, foremost among them the struggle within the Yishuv. The Deir-Yassin affair was used for political ends by MAPAM and the Revisionist parties, which were not represented on the Jewish Agency Executive. MAPAM heavily influenced the Hagana combat forces; the Revisionists had influence on ETZEL and indirectly on LEHI. As the British mandate came to an end, those two parties were determined to take part in the decisionmaking processes; each used the event to promote its interests.

MAPAM was a composite of two factions that had split off from the large MAPAI labor party; it enjoyed the support of many kibbutz settlements and considered itself a social elite. Its members, however, were not part of the inner decision-making circles in which they sought entry as the war broke out. True, one of their leaders, Yisraâ€™el Galili, was named head of the Haganaâ€™s national command, but that had been a personal appointment, not a political one. â€œThe Jewish multitudes should rally to collective responsibility to assure the supremacy of the labor movement,â€ one MAPAM leader, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, stated on December 3, 1947. Another leader, Meâ€™ir Yaâ€™ari, proclaimed that unless the labor movement stood at the head of the state, â€œits independence and character, the integrity of the Zionist vision and its fulfillment, will be at risk.â€184 If a national coalition did not arise, Ben-Gurion told a MAPAI central committee meeting on December 7, 1946, â€œwe shall establish a labor bloc of all eight workersâ€™ parties… for the next ten years.â€185

That did not happen. Until April, Ben Gurion almost single-handedly led a narrow coalition of his MAPAI party, the large conservative General Zionistsâ€™ Party and two small religious parties, the Mizrahi and Poalei-Mizrahi.

Ben-Gurionâ€™s conservative and religious partners pressured him to forge an operative agreement with ETZEL and LEHI and integrate the Revisionist Party into the coalition. American Jewish leader Abba Hillel Silver, who had been behind the Ben-Gurionâ€™s appointment as Chairman of the Jewish Agency, visited Eretz-Yisraâ€™el in mid-January, 1948. Speaking at a press conference on January 16, Silver insisted that Ben-Gurion reach an agreement with ETZEL and LEHI rather than disband them. American Jews, having helped thwart the Morrison-Grady plan and bring about the November 29 UN resolution in favor of a Jewish state, he said, demanded â€œa unification of all forces.â€186 Ben-Gurion could not afford to ignore Silverâ€™s demands.

The new MAPAM party was concerned about the dangers arising if the Hagana reached an agreement with ETZEL and LEHI. Yaâ€™akov Riftin spoke at its first convention in January, 1948: â€œ… We have fought relentlessly against letting in, through the back door and without democratic process, those who have shunned our communityâ€™s institutions. We regard any negotiations between those institutions and the terrorist groups as an infringement of authorized Labor Union resolutions.â€187 The alternative to a workersâ€™ hegemony, Meâ€™ir Yaâ€™ari added, was a coalition with the reactionaries that would bring about a civil war; he argued that Ben-Gurion was trying to legitimate â€œthe Fascist terror organizationsâ€ and let them join the Hagana front.188 The convention passed a resolution for â€œuncompromising resistance to the Jewish terror that hampers our struggle from within.â€189

â€œ. . .We should have our own political GHQ,â€ Yaâ€™ari contended. â€œNot that we should scorn the generals, but wars are conducted synthetically. A small advisory force, a guiding hand.â€ â€œWhat should we do to prevent a government without us?â€ Ben Aharon asked, and suggested that if MAPAMâ€™s demands were turned down, there would be â€œactions on our own, our own concept of a government. We should present to the UN an independent entity …. If we manage to attract other circles, we should direct matters toward such a step.â€190 Two of MAPAMâ€™s conditions for joining a future government were: no agreement with ETZEL and no Revisionists on the Jewish Agency Executive, then or in a future government. MAPAM indeed appointed committees: one for military and police affairs, including prominent Hagana figures; and another for defense affairs, including other Hagana and public figures.â€191

In early March, negotiations between Jewish Agency representatives and ETZEL seemed to be making progress. In AL Hamishmar, MAPAMâ€™s organ, Riftin railed on March 3:

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â€œWe shall rise against the Fascist betrayal …. If anyone in the labor movement still dreams, and not only dreams, of an arrangement and agreement with the terrorists… he misrepresents the truth, deceives the public and obstructs a general rallying of the masses to denounce the terrorists and remove them from the stage of public life. We have an account to settle with them, all along the line.â€

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Another leader spoke two days later at a MAPAM assembly in Tel Aviv: â€œParlor terrorism is no less a danger than Fascist terrorism, with which there could be no pact and no neutrality …. A MAPAI government with reactionaries would hold out no more than four months …. MAPAM will not let the key governmental posts… be wrenched away from the forces of progress, including the workers. We shall claim our own, we shall not sit with Fascists.â€192

The Jewish Agency and ETZEL delegations reached an understanding on March 7th. The Zionist Executive, due to convene in Tel Aviv, was expected to ratify it. Meanwhile, one Jewish Agency member, Moshe Shapira of Hapoel-Mizrahi, proposed asking Ben-Gurion to â€œsuspend all anti-E7IEL activities that could obstruct efforts to unify.â€ His proposal was accepted.â€193 The following day, MAPAM demanded convening the Labor Union Council to discuss the agreement, which was â€œliable to have a fatal influence on our standing, Hagana integrity, the Yishuvâ€™s image and the workersâ€™ status.â€194

On April 1, MAPAMâ€™s political committee discussed portfolio distribution in the future government; Ben-Aharon suggested, â€œLetâ€™s demand the Interior. The police, for instance, should be ours …. Then we could organize our campaign against the dissidents.â€195

For much of MAPAMâ€™s leadership at the time, the great disaster facing the Yishuv was not its defeat in the battle for the roads or losing Americaâ€™s support for the founding of a Jewish state, but a possible agreement between the Hagana and ETZEL. Anything that would thwart this development was legitimate in their eyes. The decisive struggle would occur when the Zionist Executive met.

And then, for MAPAM, opportunity knocked; Deir-Yassin happened.

14. Verbal Blows

The Zionist Actions Committee convened on April 6. As sessions opened, right- and left-wing members exchanged verbal blows. Dr. Herzl Rosenblum, a Revisionist, proposed discussing the Yishuvâ€™s defense methods to ascertain who was responsible for the deplorable situation. Many, he said, were of the opinion that it was Hagana high command. â€œFor quite some time now, Ben-Gurion retorted, â€œthe cream of our youth have been shedding their blood in defense of our settlements while a campaign of libel and denigration of the Hagana has been conducted by outside elements who are trying to break it; we wonâ€™t tolerate a Zionist Executive meeting at which that part of the community that sheds its blood sits on the defendantâ€™s bench.â€ A Revisionist yelled, â€œWe demand an inquiry; not against the defenders, against you!â€ MAPAMâ€™s Yisraâ€™el Bar-Yehuda proposed investigating the connection between the Revisionists and the â€œcattle and goat thieves.â€ A resolution was passed to set up a policy and defense subcommittee that would discuss the ETZEL agreement as well.196 Sessions continued on the 7th, in similar tones; Meâ€™ir Grossman, a Revisionist, argued that ETZEL and LEHI were the most combat-experienced bodies in the community, so that repudiating the agreement with ETZEL would amount to a national crime. Yitzhak Tabenkin of MAPAM would not acknowledge any rights of a coalition without his party. All MAPAI and MAPAM delegates were opposed to the agreement with ETZEL and LEHI; all General Zionists and religious party delegates were in favor.197

The Jewish Agency ratified the agreement on April 9th. Although MAPAI representatives had cast all the opposing votes, MAPAM blamed MAPAl, charging that its members had pretended to make a show of resolute opposition merely to create an alibi for itself.198 By the time the Zionist Executiveâ€™s Political Committee convened on April 11, its members had learned about the Deir-Yassin affair from the newspapers and radio; now they learned the Haganaâ€™s reaction to the murderous deed. Nonetheless, they ratified the agreement, 14 to 12, with one abstention by the Hadassah delegate. The final decision therefore lay with the Zionist Executive.199

Desperate last-minute attempts were made by opposition to prevent the agreement. On April 12, Hagana posters were hung all over Jerusalem and Al Hamishmar ran an article comparing Deir-Yassin with the Palmachâ€™s conquest of Kolonia on April 10, presenting the former as an â€œatrocity committed by a degenerate clique… a misfit operation accompanied by abuse, fascist rampaging and robbery …. a malignant sign and a peril to the community,â€ and so on, while depicting the latter as a step in the Yishuvâ€™s overall defense plan. MAPAM delegates at the assembly lobbied to postpone the vote. At 2 a.m., April 13, as those efforts seemed to have failed, a MAPAM delegate shouted, â€œThis is a treaty with murderers, the heroes of Deir-Yassin!â€ The assembly finally put it to a-vote at 5 a.m. The agreement was ratified, 39 to 32, with four abstention.200

Political, social and personal constraints hardened over the Deir-Yassin affair after the agreement was ratified. MAPAM and other political bodies, which exploited the Deir-Yassin events to their advantage, felt too much an obligation to their respective versions of the story to retract them. And, as the years went by, they even embellished the story. Gihon claims that Pail urged him to go beyond his report to Mart, which Pail branded â€œnot Zionist enough,â€ and write another on the dissidentsâ€™ conduct at Deir-Yassin. Gihon duly submitted this new report to Sheâ€™altiâ€™elâ€™s staff.201 One week after the event, the Hagana weekly Bamahane ran an article entitled â€œDeir-Yassin and Disgrace,â€ signed by â€œAvraham,â€ Paâ€™ilâ€™s Jerusalem Hagana code name.202 At that time, only one man gave final clearance to Bamahane articles: Yisâ€™el Galili, head of the Hagana national command and a MAPAM members.203

15. â€œAn Atom Bombâ€

MAPAM carried no weight with Sheâ€™altiâ€™el, but his concern was to evade responsibility for anything connected with the Deir-Yassin affair. Everything he said implied that he had been unwillingly involved.204

â€œIt was years before I learned that SHAI chief Isser Beâ€™eri and his assistant, Yitzhak Roth, had received my report on Deir-Yassin,â€ says Moneta.

_____________________________________________________

[MONETA:]

Ben-Gurion knew the truth. I asked to see him when I worked in the Prime Ministerâ€™s Office during the 1950s as Teddy Kollekâ€™s assistant for Arab affairs; but when he heard what I wanted to talk about, he didnâ€™t want to discuss Deir-Yassin: I think he knew I would tell him the truth – and he wanted to preserve that â€œcruel Jewâ€ image, which he considered a first-rate secret weapon, a deterrent, an atom bomb. I suppose he regarded the Deir-Yassin publicity as a psychological weapon that had rendered us a great service. Pail and Begin also wouldnâ€™t talk to me about Deir-Yassin.205

_____________________________________________________

To offset the continuing harm to Israeli information efforts abroad caused by Deir-Yassin, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published a booklet on the subject on March 16, 1969, for the use of Israeli diplomats. It was an attempt to prove that most of the material on Deir-Yassin was false.206 In 1971, Begin responded on the pages of the London Times to an earlier article critical of E77.EL; he mentioned the Foreign Ministry booklet, quoting several passages from it. Yitzhak Levi then warned Begin against â€œthe distribution to the Israeli public of a false version of the Deir-Yassin affair, which unavoidably will make the matter public and place the responsibility on you.â€ He sent copies of that letter to Prime Minister Golda Meâ€™ir, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Foreign Minister Abba Eban and other public figures.207

Eleven days later, Begin wrote in Maâ€™ariv, advising Levi to publish his own version in the Times.208 Foreign Ministry Director-General Gideon Raphael wrote Shaâ€™ul Avigur on April 18, 1971, â€œI refer to your letter concerning Deir-Yassin and Begin’s reference to the Foreign Ministryâ€™s publication of background material on the matter. You may find it interesting to learn that; have discontinued the use of this material and have filed it away.â€209 On May 10, 1971, Eban informed Galili in an official letter that the booklet had been meant only to assist arguments abroad; use of it had been discontinued and it no longer constituted an official document as far as the Foreign Office was concerned.210 Even in 1987, investigation of the affair made certain senior public officials apprehensive, and pressure was applied on the author to be less than thorough.

16. Brutality tend Hypocrisy

The events at Deir- Yassin had an immediate effect on the Jerusalem theater, a delayed effect on the course of the war as a whole, and long-range consequences extending even to the tune of writing. Davar reported on April 11, 1948, â€œJewish sources point out that if they manage to hold two positions, Kastel and Deir-Yassin, half of the hilly part of the Tel Aviv/Jerusalem route will be under their control.â€ Indeed, Jewish traffic moved unmolested between Neveh-Ilan and Jerusalem, a very troublesome section of the route until April 9th. Arab opportunities to attack western Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem lessened; the situation of the Arab villages southwest of the city worsened considerably and Jewish morale in Jerusalem shot up. One objective of Operation Nahshon, it should be remembered, was to prevent total Jewish demoralization in Jerusalem.

Four days later, on April 13, 78 Jews, mostly medical personnel riding to Hadassah Hospital, were slain. That was the Arab answer to Deir-Yassin. The joy of revenge did not erase the grim effect that the horror stories of Deir-Yassin had on the Arab population. Emile Ghouri, Abd-el-Kader al-Husseiii-iâ€™s successor as commander of the Jerusalem front, told reporters on April 8, â€œThe Deir-Yassin battle sowed fear …. The peasants abandoned their homes and deserted their villages.â€211 According to a British assessment, â€œthe Arab population broke down following Deir-Yassin.â€212 Moneta: â€œAfter Deir-Yassin, I returned to the Palmach and took part in attacks on other Arab villages. Most of the locals ran away before we arrived and the villages were taken either without a tight or after a short clash.213 Farmers were not the only ones to flee their homes; urban Arabs from Jerusalem and other towns did the same. Haifa fell to the Hagana in April. Fear of a fate similar to that of Deir-Yassinâ€™s residents, SHAI reported, was one factor inducing Haifaâ€™s Arabs to collapse and flee.

â€œThe Jewsâ€™ objective in that action was far-reaching, and they achieved it,â€ Abdallah al-Tel, the Arab Legionâ€™s Jordanian commander, wrote in his memoirs. â€œThey cast fear and horror over the villages and their residents fled.â€214 In the short term, the Deir-Yassin event brought advantages and contributed to a mass flight of Arabs,â€ Yisraâ€™el Ber wrote.215
The ugly face of war leers through the battle of Deir-Yassin and the ensuing public scandal. Its events have been presented ever since as an exception to the general nature of the War of Independence. That is a misrepresentation. Similar events, albeit of a less extreme nature, took place at other sites and times during the War of Independence and the wars to come. They are typical of war. The battle itself revealed the fighterâ€™s brutality toward the adversary, soldier or civilian. The affair exposed the antagonisms within the Jewish camp. Generally speaking, military officers and political leaders strive to conceal events like Deir-Yassin through conspiracies of silence, classification of documents, censorship and mythology; they are also assisted by house historians. Deir-Yassin was an exception to the rule: the ETZEL, LEHI, Hagana and MAPAM leaders had a vested interest in spreading highly inflated versions of the true facts. It was not virtue that guided those who condemned the deeds at Deir-Yassin; they, too, during that war committed similar atrocities that remained hidden from the public eye. The events at Deir-Yassin illuminated two human attributes that add precious little honor to the race: brutality and hypocrisy.

1. Interview with Mordechai Ra’anan on December 9, 1977; interview with Yehoshua Gorodenchik on February 16, 1988.

2. Yosef Shapira (ed.), David She’alti’el – Jerusalem 1948, p. 142.

3. David She’alti’el Archives; series of interviews with Moshe Idelstein and Moshe Barzilai in 1987.

4. IDF Archives, War of Independence Collected Files 32/17, from “Mizrahi” (Yitzhak Navon) to the district commander, April 2, 1948.

5. Jabotinsky Institute, protocols of a 1952 petition by fighters disabled at DeirYassin against the compensation bureau of the Ministry of Defense, challenging its refusal to recognize them as disabled veterans; series of previously cited interviews with Mordechai Ra’anan.

15. Jerusalem Archives, statement of Moshe Idelstein; series of previously cited interviews with Moshe Idelstein and Moshe Barzilai; series of previously cited interviews with Arieh Tepper-Amit; interview with Yeshuron Schiff on May 5, 1968; interview with Na’aman Stavi on June 8, 1979.

16. Previously cited interview with Yeshuron Schiff.

17. Series of previously cited interviews with Mordechai Ra’anan.

18. Series of previously cited interviews with Yehoshua Zetler.

19. Interview w;th Ben-Tzion Cohen on May 7, 1963.

20. Series of interviews with Petahia Zelivansky in 1968-1970.

21. Series of interviews with Yehuda Lapidot in 1963 and 1987.

22. Series of interviews with Me’ir Pa’il from 1973 to 1981; Author’s Archives,` statement of Me’ir Pa’il on May 10, 1971; interview with David Cohen on July 18, 1987; series of previously cited interviews with Yitzhak Levi; David Ben-Gurion’s Diary, February 2, 1943.

104. Previously cited interview with Yonah Ben-Sasson; series of interviews with Avraham Halperin, who replaced Ben-Sasson until a new commander was appointed to Givat-Saul); Jabotinsky Institute, statement of Yehuda Marienberg; Yardena Golani: The Myth of Deir-Yassin, p. 44.

113. Problems of the Times- An Open Forum of Public Life, Vol. VII, No. 3, April 15,1948.

114. Al Hamishmar, August 4, 1972.

115. Jerusalem Archives, statement of Shim’on Moneta.

116. Author’s Archives, previously cited report to David She’alti’el on the capture of Deir-Yassin, April 12, 1948; previously cited interview with Gid’on Sarig; series of previously cited interviews with Moshe Barzilai and Yehoshua Zetler.

124. Author’s Archives, statement provided the author by Uri Brenner; Jabotinsky Institute, statement of Knesset Member Me’ir Pa’il. In 1989, Pa’il said that he had put a number in that report as no one had made a body count at the time.

134. Previously cited interview with Tzvi Ankori. Ankori did not know that De Reynier had already been to Deir-Yassin.

135. Author’s Archives, military police action report, April 12, 1948; Author’s Archives, from “Oded” to district commander, April 12, 1948; series of previously cited interviews with Yitzhak Levi. According to Levi, Oded was a Home Guard, commander.

159. Previously cited interview with Yehoshua Ariâ€™eli, corroborated by Mrs. Ariâ€™eli, who was present during the interview. Arab witnesses now accept this figure and admit exaggerating the Deir-Yassin massacre for propaganda purposes. The Jerusalem Report, April 2, 1998.

160. Kol Hair, May 1, 1981.

161. Authorâ€™s Archives, recorded conversation with senior military officer, December 4, 1987.

215. Yisraâ€™el Ber, Israelâ€™s Security – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 193. A mysterious character who served as a senior officer in the Hagana and later in the IDF, Ber became a historian and military commentator for Haâ€™aretz. He later was charged with espionage for the USSR and died in prison while serving his sentence.

hogorina

October 24, 2012 at 5:45 pm

It is dangerous to speak about Grand Orientalism’ grasp of intellectual banditry throughout global enslavement of a specific order set up by lucifer.